A UK company is turning discarded festival tents into raincoats

If you’ve ever wondered what happens to the massive amount of trash left behind at festivals, you’re not alone. Beth Cosmos, a festival-goer herself who worked on the festival scene while completing her fashion design degree at the University of South Wales, thought the same after seeing the things people leave behind after the party’s over. She learned that more than 200,000 tents are left behind in the UK each year and saw a perfect opportunity, focusing dissertation on the relationship between fashion consumption and sustainability.

From there, her line of kids raincoats, named Billygoats and Raincoats, began. “I thought, ‘These are waterproof and are going to waste,'” Cosmos told Wales Online. “So I brought a few back home with me and bits of tents were cut up all over the kitchen table. I still have it, the first few trials.”

With the start of her new company, she’s hoping to expand beyond just kid’s raincoats in the near future, but for now, will keep taking a party’s waste and transforming it into trendy, sustainable clothing.